


In the End You Drown in Blue

by Vivacious



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, M/M, Mind Palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-17
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-03-07 23:36:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3187472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivacious/pseuds/Vivacious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So… what do you want me to say, Sherlock? What do you regret not saying yourself? I promise we don’t have to talk about these things tomorrow,” John adds with a playful tone. The light casts softly on his face. The nerves on Sherlock’s fingertips are tingling.</p><p>“There will be no tomorrow,” Sherlock mentions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the End You Drown in Blue

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Lopussa hukut siniseen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3082445) by [Vivacious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vivacious/pseuds/Vivacious). 



> I first wrote this 26.10.2014 in Finnish and then decided to translate it for fellow angst lovers. It was written mostly in a stream of consciousness, which might be showing a bit. Kudos and comments are appreciated. 
> 
> I do not own the characters or the song in the beginning. I'm just playing a bit...

_My eyes feel like I’m asleep_

_stuck inside an empty dream._

_Question if this is even real_

_a cliché way for me to feel._

_Unfinished messages to send_

_I told you I never want to end._

_– More Than Friends, Gabrielle Aplin_

 

The sky is streaked with red and dotted with yellow spots against its black canvas. It’s like a giant Van Gogh painting. It’s beautiful despite the chaos that’s brewing on the ground. People wander aimlessly on the streets and most of them have turned their faces towards the sky. This painting captures even the most critical of eyes. The traffic is jammed, cars have been abandoned around the city and shopping bags dropped on the ground. One can hear sobbing, rage that sparkles like the sky and whispered words of comfort. _I love you, I love you._

 

Sherlock sees all this through the wooden blinds. His violin hangs from his fingers, at times he draws a quiet note from it with his shaking hand. The flat is too quiet now that Mrs Hudson had left to her sister’s place and the TV had been silenced as the connections had been lost. _Mrs Hudson leave Baker Street? England would fall._ That’s what Sherlock had said once. He wishes he hadn’t been correct.

 

Mycroft had called him two hours earlier with a husky voice and asked him to join him and their parents in a bunker. _Take the Watsons with you. This is the last chance, little brother._ Sherlock had answered that he’d rather die at home. Mycroft’s voice had been shaky when he left his goodbyes and Sherlock had stared at the ever more colourful sky with eyes that saw nothing. For the first time in years he had felt the urge to hug his big brother like when everything had still been simple between them. It had always been easy to hang up on Mycroft, but that time… that one last time Sherlock hadn’t been able to do it. He had just put the mobile phone on speaker and put it on the table. It had taken three minutes before the beeping had started.   _Goodbye, Mycroft._

 

Sherlock had had to dig out his violin to drown out the suffocating silence. But the comfort it brings is fickle as the chords die too early in the warm and shimmering air.

 

Not much longer anymore.

 

Not much longer anymore.

 

Sherlock had never thought it would happen like this. A bullet to his chest, blood on a wall-to-wall carpet. A macabre, purple necklace over his windpipe. A step slipping from a wet roof or perhaps poison burning in his veins, stronger than seven percent. Those are all options Sherlock had considered. Even embraced.

 

Now he looks up to the sky and wishes he hadn’t deleted all information about astronomy. On the other hand, it’s not like the knowledge would bring him much joy.

 

_(“But it’s the Solar System!”_

_Lately Sherlock had not believed he would die alone_.)

 

He is so lost in his head that he doesn’t notice his guest before he grasps his wrist and tears the violin away from his lax hold. Sherlock startles as the warm fingers wrap around his cold skin.

 

“Hi.”

 

Sherlock swallows. “You came.”

 

John lets out a small, uncomfortable laugh. “What did you expect?”

 

John lets go of him and sets the violin in its case. It will splinter at the same time as their bones, but John still handles it gently and closes the shining wood inside the dark velvet. Sherlock skin is still tingling, he is still _alive, alive and sentimental_ , and somewhere outside it’s raining stardust. Surely.

 

Sherlock shrugs. “Is there still something that’s worth waiting for?” he asks casually.

 

“You’re scared,” John notices and leans against the windowsill beside him. The shoulders of John’s jacket are frosted with grey pieces of plaster. Those had rained upon him as the first meteorite pieces had fallen upon the buildings he had walked past. Perhaps. Sherlock does not want to waste time with deductions (a thought he had thought he would never have).

 

“And you’re not? A brave little soldier. Are you saying that you’re just ready to…”

 

“I was only scared that I wouldn’t get here in time,” John answers. “That you wouldn’t wish me to be here.”

 

Sherlock meets his gaze incredulously. His forehead creases. “You would not say that,” he mumbles. “John. You wouldn’t…”

 

John faces him seriously. “Wouldn’t I? What would you have me say then?”

 

Sherlock turns his hand into a fist and closes his eyes. “I don’t know,” he lies. John’s hand descends on his shoulder.

 

“It won’t be long anymore. Did you hear that crash?”

 

“Of course I heard it,” Sherlock snaps. John’s fingers start stroking soft arches over his collar.

 

“So… what do you want me to say, Sherlock? What do you regret not saying yourself? I promise we don’t have to talk about these things tomorrow,” John adds with a playful tone. The light casts softly on his face. The nerves on Sherlock’s fingertips are tingling.

 

“There will be no tomorrow,” Sherlock mentions. He leans a bit closer to John, to his warm arm. Sherlock had measured John’s pulse after he had returned from his exile, and he hadn’t known if it was elevated because of held back rage ( _you weren’t planning to return)_ or some other feeling.

 

“That’s right,” John says. His voice is made of warm fire and the nights they had spent in dark alleys, side by side. It sends shivers down Sherlock’s spine. It would be so easy to follow John’s lead and let the carefully suppressed words crackle out into the air. But…

 

“But you aren’t really here.”

 

John’s hand stops. “Excuse me?”

 

“If I open my eyes. Really open them…” Sherlock swallows. “You won’t be here anymore.”

 

John’s fingers close into a fist and then open one by one. Like petals. Once, after another failed date, John gave Sherlock flowers. _You have more to do with them than I do. Light them into fire if you want._ John must not have known the meaning of red chrysanthemums. ( _I love you. Could you really, John?)_

 

“You are not here outside of my mind palace,” Sherlock repeats. “You’re with _them_.”

 

John sighs. “You know that…” His fingers glide open and closed, and Sherlock won’t meet his eyes. “That I’m not good with saying these thing. _We_ aren’t good with saying these things,” John continues.

 

The lights flicker off and they are left in darkness. You aren’t supposed to be able to see stars in the city.

 

Not much longer. Not much longer anymore. John clears his throat. “I would be here if I could. And… you could have been with us. Why didn’t you come?” He asks with a biting tone. Sherlock gives him a look.

 

“You know why I didn’t.”

 

John shakes his head. “No, I don’t,” he answers.

 

The corners of Sherlock’s mouth jerk mirthlessly. “You don’t deserve to see me dying again,” he merely says. _And I don’t even know if you would have wanted that I… And you would have looked into her eyes, not mine and I couldn’t have taken that._

 

“You _idiot_ ,” John says and it sounds just like you could imagine it to were he actually there. Obviously. “I thought you said ‘just the two of us against the rest of the world’. You belong with me.”

 

“John,” Sherlock says and it’s both a warning and a dangerously longing breath.

 

“Tell me what you want me to say,” John’s reflection asks again. Sherlock closes his eyes. Not long anymore and he is so weak. _And John will never get to know._

 

Sherlock grasps John’s hand. He has always liked John’s hands. They are small compared to his own, compact in size and clever everywhere but on the keyboard. Their touch has always made Sherlock’s pulse to play a quick melody.

 

(he had imagined that he had played his goodbyes in the wedding, but the symphony still goes on in his blood)

 

 Sherlock heads to sit in his chair and John follows him with silent steps. John crouches before him.

 

“John,” Sherlock whispers.

 

One word is enough. John curves the fingers of his free hand against Sherlock jawline. They breathe and slowly the gap between them disappears.

 

_Too late._

John’s lips taste like rain. Sherlock’s face is wet and time runs through their fingers.

 

_Too late._

Slowly the entire rooms fills with the light that’s flooding from outside. It paints John’s eyelashes with silver.

 

_Too late._

It should have happened after a case, when the sweet adrenaline was coursing through their veins and laughter was flowing inside 221B. _It should have happened_ , Sherlock thinks. His fingers tug John’s hair tightly. The light grows and a parching hotness fills his bones.

 

“ _John,_ ” he hisses as red spots cover his eyelids. He forces them open.

 

The world ends with blue.


End file.
